Associated Press
Satomi Mitarai, 12, was killed Tuesday, apparently by a fellow student at an elementary school in southern Japan.
Posted on 06/02/2004 1:40:23 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
An 11-year-old girl slashed a female classmate to death with a razor knife yesterday in a shocking attack in an elementary school in southern Japan, police said.
The lunchtime assault happened in a classroom in Sasebo, 980km southwest to Tokyo, an official with the Nagasaki Prefectural police said on condition of anonymity.
Police in Sasebo said the victim suffered wounds to the neck and arms. She was stabbed with a small knife with a retractable razor used to cut paper, police said.
Police identified the victim as Satomi Mitarai, 12. The name of the attacker was not released, in accordance with Japanese legal protections for juvenile offenders.
Mitarai's bleeding body was discovered in a third-floor classroom by a teacher who called police. Agents quickly apprehended the young suspect, who was being questioned.
Prefectural police said the suspect had confessed, though they did not yet have a motive. TV footage showed police guarding the school and inspecting the classroom where the attack apparently happened.
The killing was committed during lunchtime, which in Japan is taken in the classroom. The stabbing, however, happened in a class where children were not eating.
Also yesterday, a 38-year-old Japanese woman repeatedly stabbed her teenage daughter with a kitchen knife and then slit her own wrist following an argument over going to school, police said yesterday.
Kazumi Isonishi, 38, was found barely conscious in her bathroom in Moriguchi, some 400km west of Tokyo, early yesterday after her 16-year-old daughter called police.
After breaking into the house, police found the bloodied daughter lying near her bed with nine stab and slash wounds to her back and chest.
"The mother told the daughter to go to school, it developed into an argument and then she stabbed the daughter and tried to kill herself," a Moriguchi city police spokesman said.
Increasing violence in Japan's schools and among youth has been a rising concern in recent years.
Last July, a 12-year-old boy was accused of kidnapping, molesting and murdering a four-year-old in the southern city of Nagasaki.
In the same month, a 14-year-old boy was arrested for beating a 13-year-old classmate to death in Okinawa.
Must be time to ban knives and clubs then...for the children of course.
It's not the gun culture that causes kids to kill (in especially vicious ways).
And it isn't necessarily the media that trains them how to do it either. In that 1997 decapitation case, there was a witch hunt to investigate the backgrounds of people who had a history of renting especially violent (adult only) videos.
Only problem was the guilty party was not among those customers. I always say that the only way to prevent such records from being improperly used is to demand that private businesses don't keep such records.
Associated Press
Satomi Mitarai, 12, was killed Tuesday, apparently by a fellow student at an elementary school in southern Japan.
This was the lead on NHK TV news last night. They used the word 'attacked' instead of 'killed'. They interviewed a mother who wondered how box cutters could have been left around in the study room.
We are hanging by a thin thread if they consider the problem to be access to sharp objects. Often times the parents are very practical in these hard times. We will see how it plays out. Prayers to the family and community.
What's up? Long time no see.
Nahhh.. won't fit on a bumper sticker...
My friend, he's Japanese. He says that on the news in Japan, there's at least one murder a night. Now, he could be exagerating, but I have asked myself, why would he? So if it is true, LETS BAN ALL KNIVES!!!!!! jk jk
People, you're missing the obvious:
It's Bush's fault! He and Cheney and their cronies at Halliburton distributed razor knives to little Japanese girls, then the CIA trained them to kill. [/moonbattery]
Barbaric!
Let's put that in perspective. That one murder a day is what occurred in an entire nation of over 120 million people. Every murder here is on the national news because there are still so few.
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